1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to interfacing with elements of a viewable screen presented on an electronic device. In particular, the disclosure relates to speech-directed interfacing with elements on a viewable screen enabled by reference to a view hierarchy associated with the viewable screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
A large number of electronic devices that support speech-based user interfaces with elements on a viewable screen rely on pre-defined speech commands to trigger functions associated with the displayed elements of the screen. For example, on mobile devices, these existing speech recognition based mechanisms execute a pre-defined set of actions, such as “Turn on WiFi”, “Call Alice”, “New Message”, and others. These implementations are limited to the pre-defined set of actions, and updates to screens require commensurate updates to the list of speech commands available for that screen.
The description of the illustrative embodiments can be read in conjunction with the accompanying figures. It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements. Embodiments incorporating teachings of the present disclosure are shown and described with respect to the figures presented herein. Also, within the descriptions of the different figures, the use of the same reference numerals and/or symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items, and similar elements can be provided similar names and reference numerals throughout the figure(s). The specific identifiers/names and reference numerals assigned to the elements are provided solely to aid in the description and are not meant to imply any limitations (structural or functional or otherwise) on the described embodiments.